ANGELINA Jolie is in Oscar-caliber form – and looks great in flapper-style clothes – as a woman who takes on corrupt cops in 1928 Los Angeles in Clint Eastwood’s very dark, fact-based and beautifully crafted “Changeling.”
This melodrama would have made a great movie for Bette Davis or Joan Crawford – if the Hollywood studios weren’t in bed with the LAPD and the story wasn’t too disturbing for the 1930s women’s movie crowd.
Jolie is Christine Collins, a single mom whose 9-year-old son, Walter, disappears one Saturday while she’s working an extra shift as a telephone company supervisor.
Five months later, the scandal-ridden LAPD stages a photo op reuniting Christine with Walter at a train station. Only it isn’t Walter, but a young imposter the cops pressure her to take home.
Christine protests the scam repeatedly to Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), the head of the juvenile investigations unit. When she takes her complaint to the press, Jones finally has Christine thrown in the psychiatric ward.
Fortunately she’s found an ally in the Rev. Briegleb (John Malkovich, effectively cast against type), a radio evangelist who has been protesting the LAPD’s policy of executing and incarcerating criminals and others it considers embarrassing without such niceties as trials.
At the same time, Captain Jones is trying to quash an investigation at a chicken ranch, where a 15-year-old illegal immigrant from Canada is telling a chilling tale.
The teenager (Eddie Alderson, very good) says he was forced to help his adult cousin murder around 20 kidnapped youngsters – and identifies Walter as one of the possible victims.
The excellent script by J. Michael Straczynski comes hurtling down twin tracks – Jones and his superiors face hearings by the Los Angeles City Council just as the apprehended serial killer, Gordon Northcott (scary standout Jason Butler Harner) stands trial across the street.
Northcott taunts Christine about Walter’s fate, and she physically confronts him on the eve of his hanging in a scene that’s as credulity-straining as it is dramatically satisfying.
Sort of a companion piece to “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” as well as Eastwood’s underrated “A Perfect World,” this gripping film takes great pains to re-create the City of Angels during the early part of the 20th century.
Eastwood has peopled it with a terrific cast, including Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone”) as a prostitute Christine meets while incarcerated, Michael Kelly as an honest detective who defies Jones to investigate the serial killings, and a trio of remarkable juvenile performances.
There’s Gattlin Griffith as Walter Collins; Devon Conti as his defiant impersonator, Arthur Hutchins; and Asher Axe, who relates a hard-to-watch flashback in a twisty epilogue set in 1935.
Jolie’s attention-grabbing work here will inevitably be compared with “A Mighty Heart,” in which she disappeared into the role of Mariane Pearl, widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Neither woman is a victim, but Christine more openly suffers than the stoic Mariane. And Jolie gives a big, movie star performance that rivets your attention for nearly 2½ hours.
“Changeling” is another remarkable addition to Eastwood’s directorial canon.
CHANGELING
Haunting real-life horror.
Running time: 140 minutes. Rated R (violence, disturbing images, profanity). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Cinema 1, the Union Square.